Can Europe’s capital market survive Brexit?

The case for agreeing the UK's exit deal and refocusing attention on capital markets union is becoming more powerful and more urgent

The European Central Bank and Frankfurt's financial district
Sean Gallup / Getty Images

On September 30, 2015, in those far-off days when the UK was a fully-fledged member of the European Union, then-European Commissioner Jonathan Hill announced the launch of a new initiative called the “capital markets union”.

Almost 60 years of European construction had still not created anything approaching a single market for investment, and in many EU countries capital markets remained weak and underdeveloped. The worthy aim, Hill wrote, was “to identify the barriers to the cross-border flow of investment”, and “work out...